November 5, 2004


  • November 5, 2004

    OP-ED COLUMNIST


    O.K., Folks: Back to Work


    By BOB HERBERT





    An iron rule of life is to be careful what you wish for.


    President Bush can take his re-election victory to the bank, and his political portfolio has been bolstered by enhanced Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. That's the good news for the president. Nearly all the other news is bad.


    A story in the business section of yesterday's Times noted, "Even as President Bush was celebrating his election victory on Wednesday, his Treasury Department provided an ominous reminder about the economic challenges ahead."


    With budget deficits exploding, the government will have to borrow $147 billion in the first three months of 2005, a quarterly record. But the record won't stand for long. The government is hemorrhaging money, and the nation has a war to pay for. A new record is almost sure to be set before the year is out.


    Managing money is not one of this president's strong points. Plus and minus signs mean nothing to him. If he were actually writing checks, they'd be bouncing to the moon. The federal government's revenue was $100 billion lower this year than when Mr. Bush took office, and spending is $400 billion higher.


    Yesterday, at his press conference, the president made it clear that his campaign promise of more - not fewer - tax cuts for the wealthy is at the top of his second-term agenda.


    Much has been made of the support Mr. Bush has gotten from religious people. He's going to need all of their prayers that some miracle happens to suspend the laws of simple arithmetic and keep his fiscal house of cards from collapsing.


    Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq, overshadowed by the election, is as grim as ever. Insurgents blew up a critical oil pipeline on Tuesday, the latest severe blow to efforts to get the Iraq economy on track. Three British soldiers were killed in an attack yesterday. The assassinations, kidnappings and car bombings continued. The humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders announced that it would cease operations in Iraq because of the unrelenting danger. And Hungary became the latest U.S. coalition partner to announce that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq.


    In other words, nothing has changed. Mr. Bush's victory on Tuesday was not based on his demonstrated competence in office or on a litany of perceived successes. For all the talk about values that we're hearing, the president ran a campaign that appealed above all to voters' fears and prejudices. He didn't say he'd made life better for the average American over the past four years. He didn't say he had transformed the schools, or made college more affordable, or brought jobs to the unemployed or health care to the sick and vulnerable.


    He said, essentially, be very afraid. Be frightened of terrorism, and of those dangerous gay marriages, and of those in this pluralistic society who may have thoughts and beliefs and values that differ from your own.


    As usual, he turned reality upside down. A quintessential American value is tolerance for ideas other than one's own. Tuesday's election was a dismaying sprint toward intolerance, sparked by a smiling president who is a master at appealing to the baser aspects of our natures.


    Which brings me to the Democrats - the ordinary voters, not the politicians - and where they go from here. I have been struck by the extraordinary demoralization, even dark despair, among a lot of voters who desperately wanted John Kerry to defeat Mr. Bush. "We did all we could," one woman told me, "and we still lost."


    Here's my advice: You had a couple of days to indulge your depression - now, get over it. The election's been lost but there's still a country to save, and with the current leadership that won't be easy. Crucial matters that have been taken for granted too long - like the Supreme Court and Social Security - are at risk. Caving in to depression and a sense of helplessness should not be an option when the country is speeding toward an abyss.


    Roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Talk to your neighbors. Call or write your elected officials. Volunteer to help in political campaigns. Circulate petitions. Attend meetings. Protest. Run for office. Support good candidates who are running for office. Register people to vote. Reach out to the young and the apathetic. Raise money. Stay informed. And vote, vote, vote - every chance you get.


    Democracy is a breeze during good times. It's when the storms are raging that citizenship is put to the test. And there's a hell of a wind blowing right now.


     


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    November 5, 2004

    OP-ED COLUMNIST


    No Surrender


    By PAUL KRUGMAN





    President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda.


    Democrats are now, understandably, engaged in self-examination. But while it's O.K. to think things over, those who abhor the direction Mr. Bush is taking the country must maintain their intensity; they must not succumb to defeatism.


    This election did not prove the Republicans unbeatable. Mr. Bush did not win in a landslide. Without the fading but still potent aura of 9/11, when the nation was ready to rally around any leader, he wouldn't have won at all. And future events will almost surely offer opportunities for a Democratic comeback.


    I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr. Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality.


    Those people still have Mr. Bush's ear, and his election victory will only give them the confidence to make even bigger mistakes.


    So what should the Democrats do?


    One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, "We've got to close the cultural gap." But that's a losing proposition.


    Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.


    But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.


    Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage.


    Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base.


    In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won.


    What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.


    Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.


    It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it.


     



    November 5, 2004

    OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR


    Why We Lost


    By ANDREI CHERNY





    Washington


    On Wednesday morning, Democrats across the country awoke to a situation they have not experienced since before the New Deal: We are now, without a doubt, America's minority party. We do not have the presidency. We are outnumbered in the Senate, the House, governorships and legislatures. And the conservative majority on the Supreme Court seems likely to be locked in place for a generation. It is clearly a moment that calls for serious reflection.


    I had the honor of working for both Al Gore and John Kerry. I believe America would have been fortunate to have had them in the Oval Office. That neither won is not primarily a commentary on them. Nor were their defeats really the result of the mistakes, attacks and tactics that pundits are so endlessly fascinated by: Al Gore's sighs in debates or John Kerry's slow response to the Swift boat veterans; Bill Clinton's campaigning (or lack thereof) in 2000 and 2004; the handling of the Elián González and Mary Cheney controversies. Any time Democrats spend in the coming weeks discussing the merits of our past candidates' personalities or their campaigns' personnel will be time wasted.


    The overarching problem Democrats have today is the lack of a clear sense of what the party stands for. For years this has been a source of annoyance for bloggers and grass-roots activists. And in my time working for Al Gore and John Kerry, it certainly left me feeling hamstrung.


    Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What we don't have, and what we sorely need, is what President George H. W. Bush so famously derided as "the vision thing" - a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.


    For most of the 20th century, Democrats had a bold vision: we would use government programs to make Americans' lives more stable and secure. In 1996, President Clinton told us this age had passed, that "the era of big government is over." He was right - the world had changed. But the party has not answered the basic question: What comes next?


    It's not the sort of question that gets answered in the heat of a national election. A presidential campaign feels like running full speed across a tightrope. If you're working on its message, you spend your days sitting around conference tables in poorly lighted rooms, surrounded by spent pizza boxes and buzzing Blackberries, with the clock ticking down on another day and another speech. This is not the place to devise a new thematic direction for the party. What you wind up offering are quips and quibbles, slogans and sound bites, and heaping portions of poll-tested pabulum.


    The press also seems to overstate what staff changes can do within a campaign. Much was made of the "who's in, who's out" reports about the Kerry team, with reporters devising narratives about a supposed "shift to the middle" or a "lurch to the left." While new advisers can alter tactics and form new messages, efforts on their part to create a larger vision will fail. That has to happen long before the primaries - and it requires that the party knows where it is going.


    Throughout the campaign, voters told reporters and pollsters that they wanted a change, but didn't "know what John Kerry stands for." Our response was to churn out more speeches outlining the details of policies that Senator Kerry would then deliver in front of a backdrop that said something like "Rx to Stronger Health Care." Of course, it turned out that Americans weren't very interested in Mr. Kerry's campaign promises - perhaps because they no longer believe politicians will follow through on their commitments. They wanted to know instead how he saw the world. And we never told them.


    Misguided as they may be, the Republicans have a clear vision of America's future. Confronted with their ambitious agenda we have not chosen to match it. Instead, we have adopted Nancy Reagan's old antidrug motto, "Just Say No." As in "Stop George Bush's Assault on the Environment," "Repeal George Bush's Tax Cuts for the Wealthy" and "End George Bush's Policy of Unilateralism." These are good stands. But they are not enough. And the Republicans ended up defining John Kerry because we did not.


    I don't pretend to know exactly what the party should do now. But I do know that we better start answering some important questions. What is our economic vision in a globalized world? How do we respond to the desire of many Americans to have choices and decision-making power of their own? How can we speak to Americans' moral and spiritual yearnings? How can our national security vision be broader than just a critique of the Republican's foreign policy? If we sweep this debate under the rug, four years from now another set of people around another conference table will be struggling with the same issues we did. And America cannot afford the same result.


    Long after midnight in November 2000, I stood in the rain in Nashville and listened to the Gore campaign chairman, William Daley, tell us there would be no victory speech. On Wednesday, long after midnight, I stood in the rain in Boston listening to John Edwards tell us the same thing. I'm sick of standing in the rain.



    Andrei Cherny, the author of "The Next Deal," was director of speechwriting and a special policy adviser to John Kerry from February 2003 to last April.


     



    November 5, 2004

    OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR


    Why They Won


    By THOMAS FRANK





    Washington


    The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.


    And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.


    Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.


    Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives, without any consideration for our values or traditions.


    The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.


    Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.


    Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the "retro" Republican Party.


    Yet this would have been a perfect year to give the Republicans a Trumanesque spanking for the many corporate scandals that they have countenanced and, in some ways, enabled. Taking such a stand would also have provided Democrats with a way to address and maybe even defeat the angry populism that informs the "values" issues while simultaneously mobilizing their base.


    To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents, Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them; emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy.


    What is more likely, of course, is that Democratic officialdom will simply see this week's disaster as a reason to redouble their efforts to move to the right. They will give in on, say, Social Security privatization or income tax "reform" and will continue to dream their happy dreams about becoming the party of the enlightened corporate class. And they will be surprised all over again two or four years from now when the conservative populists of the Red America, poorer and angrier than ever, deal the "party of the people" yet another stunning blow.



    Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America."


     


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  • NEWS





    Turn Left, Cornell Review Debate Tax Cuts


    October 04, 2004

    By Elijah Reichlin-Melnick
    Sun Staff Writer


    Thanks to the Cornell Political Coalition (CPC), students on Friday had an exciting chance to hear a debate between Turn Left and the Cornell Review on the economic impact of the Bush tax cuts. The spirited, hour-long debate, entitled, "Are the Bush Tax Cuts Good for America?" pitted Paul Eastlund '05, editor-in-chief of the Cornell Review and Adam Moline '06, assistant editor of the Review, against Wayne Huang '07, managing editor of Turn Left and Mitch Fagen '07, vice president of the Cornell Democrats. In the course of the debate, the two sides clashed over everything from the fairness and morality of Bush's tax cuts to the merits of supply-side economics as practiced by former President Ronald Reagan.

    "The Bush tax cuts bring fairness and prosperity to America," Eastlund said in his opening statement. "Very poor families don't pay very much in taxes, so it's not surprising they don't get much back."

    Huang then challenged Eastlund's arguments that the tax cuts had been good for the economy. "Bush inherited a budget surplus from Clinton," he said. "Now we have a deficit of more than $420 billion ... Long term deficits like this take the country on a path to financial disaster."

    Huang also argued that Bush had been dishonest in selling the tax cuts to Congress and the American people.

    The debate was the third in a series of weekly debates sponsored by the CPC to build political awareness in the weeks before the election and provide a forum for the intelligent debate of controversial issues. The next debate will be held on Thursday at noon on Ho Plaza, and will focus on the environmental policies of the Bush administration.

    The sharpest disagreement between the two sides centered around the fairness and morality of the Bush tax cuts in particular, and the structure of the tax system more generally. Huang and Fagen condemned Bush's tax cuts for disproportionately favoring the top one percent of the population and blamed them for increasing economic inequality by widening the gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of the population. Eastlund and Moline strongly defended returning taxes to the rich, who pay more in taxes, and then accused the Democrats of favoring "income redistribution."

    "I guess this is a philosophical debate ... We believe that if rich people get richer at the expense of everyone else, that is immoral," Fagen said. "Distribution of wealth does matter. It really does matter who in society benefits from the tax code."

    Eastlund forcefully insisted that the rich did not get richer at the expense of other groups in society and argued against a "redistribution" of income from the rich to the poor.

    "Our government is not Robin Hood, nor should it be. The poor don't get taxes back because the poor don't put taxes in," he said.

    Fagen, however, challenged the claim that low-income people don't pay taxes. "If you look only at the Federal Income Tax, the rich do pay much more, but if you look at all the other taxes, especially the payroll tax, the burden falls mostly on the poor," he said.

    Moline conceded that "the poor might be paying more payroll taxes," but said that, "they get more back from the government" in the form of benefits like Social Security and Medicare.

    According to an August study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the top 20 percent of taxpayers, those with an average income of $182,700, paid 64.4 percent of federal taxes in 2001. After the Bush tax cuts were implemented, that number fell slightly to 63.5 percent in 2004. In comparison, the bottom 20 percent, those with an average income of $14,900, paid just over one percent of federal taxes in 2001 and 2004. The percentage of taxes paid by middle class families with an average income of $75,600, increased more than any other group as a result of the Bush cuts, the study found --from 18.7 to 19.5 percent.

    Another contentious topic in the debate was the national deficit, which the CBO report projected will reach $477 billion by the end of the year and could be as high as $2.4 trillion over the next ten years.

    According to Moline, both he and Eastlund agreed that, "we have to choose between tax cuts and social programs [and] Bush made a mistake by trying to do both" and failing to cut funding for some social welfare programs.

    Although they felt that Bush should have acted more forcefully to control government spending, Eastlund and Moline also emphasized that in the midst of the War on Terror, the deficit was not as important as Democrats believed. "It's just a question of priorities," Eastlund said.

    Eastlund also questioned whether a budget surplus was even desirable. "A budget surplus does not mean we have a good economy, it just means that the government has too much of our money," he said.

    Huang answered Eastlund's arguments, citing information that the budget deficit undermined economic recovery by hurting consumer confidence in the long term health of the economy, thus discouraging investment.

    Echoing many liberal critics of the Bush tax cuts, Huang argued that the cuts will undermine the future economic health of the country.

    "Bush is not returning the money to you, the taxpayer, he's lending it to you after borrowing from your children," he said.

    Turnout for Friday's debate was limited, but those who showed up came away feeling that the debate had been interesting and educational.

    The two sides "seemed pretty equally prepared," said Aimee Clark '08, although she felt that both sides "used too much technical, economic vocabulary."

    "The debaters were very, very well researched, and the debate was well executed," said Ben Ware '08, secretary of the CPC.

    Ware, who also introduced the debate, felt that the Democrats and Republicans battled each other to a draw.

    "Both sides did very well," he said.


     


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November 4, 2004



  • Monday, Nov. 01, 2004
    How Smart Is AP?
    As ambitious students load up on Advanced Placement classes, critics question their quality
    By CLAUDIA WALLIS; CAROLINA A. MIRANDA

    It's 8:30 in the morning, and the day is cold and rainy — conditions that, biologically, make it nearly impossible for the average teenager to function. Yet the 10 boys and eight girls who pour into the first-period Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus class at McNair Academic High School in Jersey City, N.J., seem remarkably alert. Maybe it's the influence of Victorina Wasmuth, their peppy, diminutive math teacher, who exudes a boundless enthusiasm as she introduces a lesson on Rolle's theorem and the extreme-value theorem, which, she explains, are key underpinnings of calculus. Wasmuth tosses out problems for her students to solve and then roves the room, examining their work. "You're all very smart!" she exclaims. "You're all capable of coming up with these theorems on your own."

    Adam Capulong, 17, who sports the collared shirt and tie required for boys at this racially diverse urban magnet school, adores the class. "It brings all aspects of math together," says the straight-A student, who is hoping to go to Harvard. But the challenging college-level course is just one small serving on an academic plate that he has heaped with five additional AP courses, including AP French, AP English Literature and AP Art History. That's on top of the three AP courses he took as a junior and one as a sophomore. Capulong's fellow senior Nayla Scaramello, 17, carries a similar load, and she got an even earlier start on her nine AP courses. As a ninth-grader, she took AP U.S. History, with its daunting college-level reading list. "College is so competitive," she explains, "and you want to stand out. I want my transcript to reflect that I'm a hard worker."


    Capulong and Scaramello may be hard-core overachievers, but they're part of a national trend. The thirst to stand out in the brutal college-admissions game is driving a kind of AP-mania all across the U.S. Last May 1.9 million AP exams were taken by 1.1 million U.S. high school students — more than double the number who took them in 1994 and more than six times the number who took them 20 years ago. During the past decade, the number of high schools offering AP classes has grown a third, to 14,904, or 60% of all U.S. high schools.

    To feed the demand, the College Board, the New York City-based company best known for administering the SAT, keeps creating new AP courses and exams. Back in 1955, when AP was introduced, there were 11 courses. By 1990 there were 29. Today there are 34, ranging from Music Theory to Computer Science. Next fall there will be three more: Italian, Russian and Chinese. It's a booming business for the nonprofit College Board, which sells teaching guides and seminars to instructors, study guides and practice exams to students, and charges $82 for an AP exam. (Much of this covers the costs of paying high school teachers and college professors to grade the exams, which include essays as well as multiple-choice questions.)

    All this growth is generally viewed as good news by the many fans of AP programs, who include parents, college-admissions officers and school administrators, as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle, who have called for additional funding to make AP courses more available to low-income students. A large selection of AP courses attended by a broad swath of the student body is widely seen as a measure of excellence for U.S. high schools and figures prominently in formulas that attempt to rank public high schools. The more active the AP program, the higher the rank and, often, the higher the school district's real estate values.

    But in some quarters, educators are worried that AP, which was created as a way to give bright high school seniors a taste of college, is turning into something it was never meant to be: a kind of alternative high school curriculum for ambitious students that teaches to the test instead of encouraging the best young minds to think more creatively. And as AP expands, some educators have begun to question the integrity of the programs and ask whether the classes are truly offering students an extra boost or merely giving them filigree for their college applications.

    To be sure, many AP programs are first rate. Calculus, especially in the hands of a gifted teacher like Wasmuth, is widely considered to be one of the best-thought-out AP programs, as is AP English Language and Composition, which teaches students how to critically analyze literary works. Two years ago, when the Center for Education at the National Academy of Sciences conducted one of the few serious studies of the AP curriculum ever done, it praised the AP Calculus program for achieving "an appropriate balance between breadth and depth."

    But the balance was off for the three other courses examined. AP Chemistry, Biology and Physics were found to be too sweeping in scope, lacking the depth of a good college course. The study's authors concluded that the practice and understanding of laboratory work — a critical piece of college-level science — was given short shrift both in the AP teacher's manuals and on the exams. They lamented that a "significant number of examination questions ... appear to require only rote learning" rather than a deeper understanding of science.

    The emphasis of breadth over depth is a charge commonly leveled at AP history courses as well. Teachers who oversee the U.S.- and European-history classes frequently complain that there is little time for discussion or debate in these fast-paced romps through a half-millennium or more of names, dates and battles. Dennis Kenny, who teaches the AP U.S. History course at McNair, has to keep an eye on the clock and calendar to make sure he covers the sprawling curriculum in time for the May exam. "We're usually struggling the last few weeks just to get to the Reagan years," he says. This fall, with a presidential campaign under way, Kenny would have loved to draw some lessons from current events, but, he laments, "there's no time. The kids love when we break away and talk about today's election, but I'm looking at the clock — and that's not a good thing."

    It was the pell-mell nature of AP history classes in particular that prompted the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a top private school in New York City, to drop all AP courses four years ago. Last year the Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey decided to drop AP U.S. History. A number of other top private schools, including Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, have always steered clear of AP courses. Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman at the National Association of Independent Schools, discerns "a movement from a small group of independent schools that have said no to AP courses," preferring to offer high-level classes that are more focused, less test-driven and perhaps more engaging. "Learning is about having a passion," observes McGovern. "The threat is that students are so concerned with how they appear to the colleges that they pack in all sorts of AP courses that may not even interest them."

    To its credit, the College Board has taken its detractors seriously. The National Academy of Sciences report offered "really good criticism," says Trevor Packer, executive director of AP programs. In response, Packer says the company has sought funds from the National Science Foundation to improve its biology, physics and chemistry courses. A retooling of the U.S. History program is also under way. But those changes will fix only part of the problem. AP courses and exams are created by teams of university professors who periodically revisit the curriculums, but the program information they send out is simply a guideline for classroom instructors. There is no mandated curriculum, nor is there any required training of teachers for AP classes, which is why the quality of the courses can vary widely from school to school. "Ultimately, our quality control is in the exam," concedes Packer.

    It's not a perfect tool. As a 10th-grader, Todd Rosenbaum, now a junior at the University of Virginia, took a biology course that met just twice a week and offered no labs, but he crammed so successfully for the AP exam that he earned a 5 (tops on AP's 5-point scale). That score allowed the high school valedictorian to skip introductory biology at the university, but he found himself woefully unprepared for an upper-level course. "Pretty much as soon as I got in, I realized that there was no way I'd survive," says Rosenbaum. He withdrew from the course and wrote an essay for the college paper urging the university "to take a more skeptical approach in accepting AP scores."

    At least Rosenbaum took the AP test (actually, he took 16 of them). About one-third of students who proudly list AP courses on their transcripts never take the exams, which are optional. Many top universities, including Harvard and M.I.T., have tightened their terms for granting credit or advanced standing on the basis of AP scores. They recognize that an exam-oriented class taken by 10th- and 11th-graders, no matter how bright and hardworking, is generally not the equivalent of a rigorous college course. "If you're being told that this is a college course, you're being told things that are not true," says Douglas Taylor, who chairs the University of Virginia biology department.

    But even as some college department heads downgrade the value of APs, admissions officers continue to regard them as a hallmark of the student who enjoys a challenge. "If the school offers APs, we expect that the students are taking them," says Marilee Jones, dean of admissions at M.I.T.

    "This is not a case of whoever has the most APs wins," insists Stanford director of undergraduate admissions Anna Marie Porras. But as kids like Adam Capulong and Nayla Scaramello know, it certainly doesn't hurt. This fall 424 students at McNair Academic signed up for AP courses. That's three-quarters of the student body.


     


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  • November 4, 2004

    EDITORIAL


    The Next President Bush







    President George W. Bush has put to rest all the ghosts of his father's one-term administration. He won a solid re-election victory on Tuesday night. The country remains, of course, divided. It is the point of a national election to illuminate divisions - these days in stark blue and red. The 49 percent of the voting public who wanted a different outcome are disappointed, and in some cases crushed and frightened about the future of the country. Their first job is to accept the will of the majority. Then it will be time for everyone - Mr. Bush, the victorious Republicans and the people who opposed them - to decide what to do next.


    Mr. Bush can either try for four years of the same, or look to his place in history. Yesterday, he offered at least some hope that he was choosing the higher road. "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation," he told the Kerry voters. Experience suggests that these conversions are short-lived. Four years ago, according to Vice President Dick Cheney, when Mr. Bush lost the popular vote and seemed to be in a position where consensus-seeking was a given, White House officials thought about taking a compromise centrist route for "about 30 seconds" before grabbing their old partisan agenda and running with it. In his speech yesterday, Mr. Cheney stressed the president's mandate. Given the way Mr. Cheney behaved during the first term, it's unnerving to imagine what he may have in mind now.


    Obviously, the losers in this election are going to be far more eager to see Mr. Bush take a different, more moderate route this time than the winners - especially the triumphalist Congressional Republican leaders. But there's a yearning out there, in red states as well as blue, for a government that works better and with less partisanship. Many of the voters who support Mr. Bush are just as unhappy about economic uncertainties, lost jobs and the number of people who have no health insurance as the people who voted for Mr. Kerry. Vast majorities of Americans want to keep the federal deficit under control, make Social Security financially sound, protect benefits like Medicare and Medicaid, and be sure that there's adequate spending on homeland security.


    Mr. Bush can address that national yearning - and leave a magnificent legacy to the country - but such an effort will require bipartisan action. Except for his education initiative, the president's domestic agenda thus far has been the product of the Republicans alone, and it has been a mess that has made nobody very happy. Tax cuts are easy to pass, even irresponsible ones. But spending cuts are not, and the president's own party refused to make them happen. Instead, Republican leaders bought the passage of the bills they needed by piling on masses of unnecessary, irresponsible pork. A truly heavy political lift, like fixing Medicare or restraining the deficit, requires national attention and the kind of political support that can come only if both parties feel they have something to gain from success.


    For Mr. Bush's opponents, one of the great disappointments of this election was the fact that the war in Iraq had little impact on the outcome. The nation is worried about whether the Iraq conflict is going well, but many of the people who wonder whether the president made the wrong choices on that had other interests when they went to the polls: a preference for the president's personality, memories of 9/11 and concern over social issues like gay marriage. While Iraq did not in the end hurt the president's re-election campaign, it has not gone away. Although members of his team campaigned as if Iraq was going very well indeed, they know better. Finding a way out of the morass in Iraq must be the work of all Americans, and on this issue, the president has a real obligation to reach out to the other party. While Democrats may be quietly hoping that Mr. Bush runs into so many problems in the new term that the country will turn back to them in the next election, no partisans are so eager for political gain that they want to see Iraq plunged into an inferno of civil war and terrorism.


    Tuesday's vote came as a particular shock in places like Europe, where much of the population simply couldn't conceive that people would want to keep Mr. Bush in power. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair made two important points to America's angry allies when he spoke about the results. One was that this is the right time for Mr. Bush to reach out to America's traditional allies - and time for the rest of the world to accept that he will be around for the next four years and must be dealt with as the American people's choice. The other is that the critical goal of stability in the Arab world will never be achieved unless the United States throws itself back into the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Blair is one Bush supporter who deserves all the election rewards he can get, and this is the one he's desperate for.


    For many anti-Bush voters, the wounds of this rancorous campaign will be raw for a long time, and the idea of joining hands with the president will be a nonstarter. And 49 percent of the public expects those in the loyal opposition to continue taking principled stands against the administration. The challenge for them will be to pick their fights wisely.


    To us, the central domestic issue of the next term will be the Supreme Court, and Mr. Bush's nomination to replace the seriously ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The president could pick a respected jurist of centrist temperament with a genuine belief in judicial restraint, or he could pick someone in the ultra-extreme school of Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Bush's social conservative base will be pressing in one direction, and will no doubt remind him that the election turned heavily on social issues, particularly opposition to abortion and gay marriage.


    The evidence in the polling data that these social issues were crucial to Mr. Bush's win - and that the bulk of those infrequent voters who stood in line for hours to vote were evangelicals, not people against the war - is pretty inescapable. But we were struck by the broad majority of voters who told pollsters that they favored a middle approach on these issues: providing gay couples with the right to have some kind of civil unions, and guaranteeing women the right to legal abortions in most, if not all, cases. This page will never give up our commitment to women's right to reproductive choice, as well as full civil rights for people of all sexual orientations. But a leader who was prepared to make political sacrifices in order to stake a claim to that middle ground could be laying the foundation for a new national consensus that might finally bring the nation's social wars to an end.


    Mr. Bush could be that leader. He could be the uniter he promised to be, then failed to become, four years ago. He could put an end to a period in national history when too many people go to the polls on Election Day convinced that victory for the other side would mean disaster for the nation. A lot of voters felt that way on Tuesday, and now Mr. Bush has the chance to show them they were wrong.



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    November 4, 2004

    OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR


    The Day the Enlightenment Went Out


    By GARRY WILLS





    Evanston, Ill.


    This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.


    This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).


    The results bring to mind a visit the Dalai Lama made to Chicago not long ago. I was one of the people deputized to ask him questions on the stage at the Field Museum. He met with the interrogators beforehand and asked us to give him challenging questions, since he is too often greeted with deference or flattery.


    The only one I could think of was: "If you could return to your country, what would you do to change it?" He said that he would disestablish his religion, since "America is the proper model." I later asked him if a pluralist society were possible without the Enlightenment. "Ah," he said. "That's the problem." He seemed to envy America its Enlightenment heritage.


    Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?


    America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.


    The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.


    Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.


    It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.


    President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect.


    In his victory speech yesterday, President Bush indicated that he would "reach out to the whole nation," including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers.


    The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.



    Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion."





    November 4, 2004

    ALLIES


    Hungary Joins Others in Pulling Troops From Iraq


    By JUDY DEMPSEY,
    International Herald Tribune





    International Herald Tribune


    BERLIN, Nov. 3 - Hungary announced Wednesday that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq, becoming the latest country in United States-led coalition to bow to public pressure and prepare to bring its soldiers home.


    Speaking at a ceremony for the end of military conscription, the newly appointed prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, said Hungary was obliged to stay until the Iraqi elections scheduled for January, but would withdraw the troops by March.


    "To stay longer is an impossibility," said Mr. Gyurcsany (pronounced JOR-chahn-ee).


    The United States had persuaded 32 countries to provide 22,000 soldiers as part of the multinational force established to stabilize postwar Iraq. But over the last few months, a number of countries have withdrawn, some citing the cost but others concerned about security, and many governments face increasing public opposition to the war.


    Spain's Socialist government withdrew its 1,300 troops after it swept into power last March, reversing the commitment of the prior center-right government of Prime Minister José María Aznar. The Dominican Republic withdrew 302 soldiers, Nicaragua 115 and Honduras 370. The Philippines withdrew its 51 in July, a month early, after insurgents took hostage a Filipino truck driver working for a Saudi company. Norway withdrew 155 military engineers, keeping only 15 staff members to help NATO train and equip the Iraqi security forces.


    Two large contributors to the international force - Britain, with 12,000 troops, and Italy, with more than 3,100 - have insisted they will not withdraw. But Poland, the fourth-largest contributor, with 2,400 troops, says it intends to withdraw by the end of next year, and the Netherlands, with 1,400 troops, said this week that the latest rotation of troops would be its last contribution to Iraq.


    New Zealand is withdrawing its 60 engineers and Thailand said it wanted to bring home its 450 troops. Singapore has reduced its contingent to 33, from 191; Moldova has trimmed its force to 12, from 42. On Wednesday Bulgaria's Defense Ministry said it would reduce its 483 troops to 430 next month, Reuters reported.


    Iraq's interim government had asked Hungary to keep its troops in the country for another year. But Peter Matyuc, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said in a statement that the government would ask Parliament on Monday to extend the troops' mandate by only three months.


    "By March 31, 2005, we will bring our troops back from Iraq," Mr. Gyurcsany said. "From then on, the existence of a stable democratic and safe Iraq has to be created by different means, above all political means.''


    In a letter signed in January 2003, Hungary joined ranks with Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Britain in endorsing the Bush administration's willingness to use force to disarm Iraq, a move that deepened Europe's divisions over Iraq. A ninth country, Slovakia, signed the letter later. That first letter was followed by another signed by 10 more countries.


    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld added to the divisions by describing those governments that opposed military intervention - notably France and Germany - as Old Europe and those who supported Washington as New Europe.


     


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November 1, 2004


  • November 1, 2004

    OP-ED COLUMNIST


    Days of Shame


    By BOB HERBERT





    Overseas, our troops are being mauled in the long dark night of Iraq - a war with no end in sight that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,100 American troops and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent Iraqis.


    At home, the party of the sitting president is systematically stomping on the right of black Americans to vote, a vile and racist practice that makes a mockery of the president's claim to favor real democracy anywhere.


    This will never be seen as a shining moment in U.S. history.


    There is a hallucinatory quality to the news as Americans prepare to vote tomorrow in what is probably the most critical election the country has faced since 1932. Osama bin Laden made his bizarre cameo appearance on Friday, taunting the president who once promised to get him dead or alive. Commentators have been compulsively reading the tea leaves ever since, trying to determine who was helped by the video, George W. Bush or John Kerry.


    On Saturday, as if to take our minds off the sideshow, nine more American marines were killed in the Iraq slaughterhouse. It was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in six months. The death toll for Iraqis, which the U.S. government has tried mightily to keep from the American people, is flat out horrifying. Unofficial estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the war have ranged from 10,000 to 30,000. But a survey conducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad compared the death rates of Iraqis before and after the American invasion. They estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis have died in the 18 months since the invasion than would have been expected based on Iraqi death rates before the war.


    The scientists acknowledged that the survey was difficult to compile and that their findings represent a rough estimate. But even if they were off by as many as 20,000 or 40,000 deaths, their findings would still be chilling.


    Most of the widespread violent deaths, the scientists reported, were attributed to coalition forces. "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces," the report said, "were women and children."


    That people are dying by the tens of thousands in a war that did not have to be fought - a war that was launched by the United States - is mind-boggling.


    Also mind-boggling is the attempt by Republican Party elements to return the U.S. to the wretched days of the mid-20th century when many black Americans faced harassment, intimidation and worse for daring to exercise their fundamental right to vote. A flier circulating extensively in black neighborhoods in Wisconsin carries the heading "Milwaukee Black Voters League." It asserts that people are not eligible to vote if they have voted in any previous election this year; if they have ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation; or if anyone in their family has ever been found guilty of anything.


    "If you violate any of these laws," the flier says, "you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."


    In Philadelphia, where a large black vote is essential to a Kerry victory in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, John Perzel, is hard at work challenging Democratic voters. He makes no bones about his intent, telling U.S. News & World Report:


    "The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down."


    That's called voter suppression, folks, and the G.O.P. concentrates its voter-suppression efforts in the precincts where there are large numbers of African-Americans. And that's called racism.


    These are days of shame for the United States. No one writing a civics text for American high school students would recommend this kind of behavior for a great and mighty nation. We have to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from Iraq and rebuild a truly representative democracy here at home. Right now we have a mess on both fronts.


    It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who said that "America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment."


    That's as good a thought as any to carry with you into the voting booth tomorrow.



    E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com


     


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    Posted on Mon, Nov. 01, 2004



    The architects of quagmire
    POLITICIANS AND ADVISERS ARE TO BLAME FOR VIETNAM, NOT PROTESTERS LIKE KERRY
    By Stanley Karnow


    Recently, as we looked back a generation to the war in Southeast Asia, a Vietnamese official stationed in Washington remarked: ``We suffered grievously but we have put the ordeal behind us and are strenuously laboring to reconstruct our devastated country. It puzzles me, however, that America is still fighting the conflict.''


    His comment was prompted by the shrill effort by Sen. John Kerry's rabid opponents to besmirch him. They maintain among their myriad allegations that he inflated his service as a naval officer in Vietnam, cooperated with the communists by secretly meeting with their representative in Paris and maligned his fellow soldiers by accusing them of perpetrating horrendous atrocities.


    In a cascade of books, articles and television ``documentaries,'' they contend that his agitation and condemnation of the war in vocal testimony before a congressional panel after his return home played into the hands of the enemy, lengthened the conflict, significantly increased the number of U.S. dead and wounded and postponed the release of the captured American bomber pilots incarcerated and tortured in the ``Hanoi Hilton,'' the grimy dungeon in the North Vietnamese capital.


    Right-wing gambits


    Contrived to derail Kerry's campaign for the presidency, these attacks are politically motivated gambits generously subsidized by ultraconservative Republican groups. As such, they are blatantly partisan. Particularly flimsy is their charge that the communists, cleverly using an array of clandestine channels in Europe, Hong Kong and elsewhere, surreptitiously financed critics of the war as an expedient device to disseminate their propaganda.


    The anti-war movement has been acclaimed in retrospect by many of its participants as a salutary episode that awakened the nation to its manifold problems in the wake of the complacent 1950s. But Vietnam was only one of their issues. They focused on everything from voting rights to environmental problems, each faction promoting its own agenda. Their agitators convulsed and paralyzed cities and campuses, inciting panicky governors, mayors and deans to subdue them by mobilizing police and troops equipped with loaded rifles and canisters of tear gas.


    The turmoil failed to influence middle-class voters. On the contrary, it alarmed and alienated them, enabling Richard Nixon to score a landslide triumph in 1972 by vowing to achieve ``peace with honor.''


    `Stay there forever?'


    Eager to extricate himself from the vexatious Vietnam predicament and pursue an ambitious foreign policy, Nixon instructed Henry Kissinger to agree to a cease-fire that caved in to the stiff communist demands. Kissinger's deputy, John Negroponte, cautioned that the lopsided accord would doom the feckless South Vietnamese regime, to which his boss furiously retorted, ``What do you want us to do? Stay there forever?


    I began reporting on the war in the summer of 1959, and covered it until the communist tank, infantry and guerrilla units crashed into Saigon 16 years later. Like my colleagues, I was swayed by the ``domino theory,'' the thesis enunciated by U.S. strategists that the Soviet Union and China would dominate the world unless we held the line in the Far East. But I soon recognized that despite our military superiority, we were bogged down in a hopeless quagmire as we confronted stubborn, resilient adversaries prepared to accept ghastly losses to attain their goals.


    My several visits to Vietnam in the aftermath of the conflict authenticated that estimate. Every North Vietnamese and Viet Cong veteran I questioned adamantly emphasized that he had been engaged in a sacred struggle for which he would have willingly sacrificed himself. Having seen the contorted, decapitated cadavers of their comrades bulldozed into mass graves, I believed them.


    Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the communist forces, was equally intransigent when I interviewed him in his modest villa in Hanoi in March 1991. I asked him whether he had entertained the notion of a compromise settlement as a means to reduce casualties.


    Rejecting the suggestion as ludicrous, he stressed that his primary concern was victory and thundered in fluent French, ``We would have fought the Americans for another 10, 20, 50, 100 years, regardless of the cost.''


    Hence, our foes had little faith in their sympathizers to turn the tide in their favor. Implacable, isolated and unfamiliar with the complicated practice of negotiations, our foes concentrated on the battlefield as their pivotal arena. It was in their flooded paddies, concealed villages, tangled mountain jungles and labyrinth of rivulets that they had repeatedly resisted Chinese invasions for millenniums and vanquished their French colonial rulers in the remote valley of Dienbienphu in 1954.


    The Vietnam War was a momentous chapter in U.S. history, and deserves to be debated and discussed in detail, as it now is in high schools and colleges. But Kerry's flamboyant antagonists have added nothing of substance to the subject.


    `Terribly wrong'


    Opinion polls indicate that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe it to have been a dreadful mistake -- or as the efficient, vigorous Robert McNamara, a chief architect of the conflict under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, subsequently concluded, ``We were wrong, terribly wrong.''


    Yet the hard-liners obstinately refuse to concede it was a futile enterprise and, in their strident endeavor to depict it as a glorious venture, insist on attributing the worst and only defeat in our collective memory to the crude, rambunctious protesters rather than to the actual culprits: the Democratic and Republican politicians and their entourage of supposedly sagacious civilian and military advisers who, suffused with deceptive optimism, propelled us into the debacle.


    STANLEY KARNOW is the author of ``Vietnam: A History,'' and won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1991. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.



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    Posted on Mon, Nov. 01, 2004



    Voters have a duty, too
    INFORMED CHOICES BETTER FOR ALL
    By Rowland Nethaway


    The voting reform most needed in America today is one that costs little and that the government has the least control over.


    Americans need to inform themselves about the candidates, the issues and the election process.


    The problem with this reform is that it requires effort. Too many Americans are willing to let their private decisions be guided by campaign commercials and political sales pitches.


    This isn't a good way to buy a car, much less elect a president.


    Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, feared for the future of the new democratic government he helped establish if Americans failed to inform themselves about the candidates and the issues.


    The problem, as Jefferson saw it, was that citizens too lazy to become well-informed become easy prey for political manipulators who will form a despotic government for their own benefit and deprive the citizens of their liberties.


    Jefferson was such a believer in his premise that an informed electorate was necessary to sustain democratic self-government that he proposed a constitutional amendment to legalize federal support for education. That proposal failed but his conviction that citizens can protect their freedoms only if they can cast informed ballots never wavered.


    Even with nationwide public schools, repeated surveys show Americans are woefully ignorant of both the candidates and the issues that affect their daily lives.


    Only 30 percent of voters, according to the Cato Institute, know about the new highly controversial Medicare prescription-drug benefit. And the list goes on.


    Being one of Jefferson's well-informed citizens should include a daily habit of keeping up with current issues in local, state and federal governments.


    Voters informed about the candidates, the issues and the voting process can do a better job protecting their liberties than the legions of lawyers prepared to file lawsuits on their behalf.


    ROWLAND NETHAWAY is a senior editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald.


     


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    Posted on Mon, Nov. 01, 2004



    The poor: unseen and ignored
    POVERTY RATE AN ISSUE FOR NEXT PRESIDENT

    Mercury News Editorial

    With 35 million poor people in America, including nearly 13 million children, why has poverty been virtually ignored as an issue in the presidential campaign?


    The poverty rate has increased steadily over the past three years, most dramatically among children. Yet the poor aren't classified as likely voters, and they don't contribute to political campaigns.


    So it's not surprising that when President Bush and John Kerry have paused in their debate over national security to discuss domestic issues, their focus has been the plight of the middle class. They've debated whether the rich pay more than their share of taxes. When asked about the plight of the poor, they've marveled at the success of welfare reform in putting poor mothers to work. They've promised poor families the same thing they've promised to the middle class: better schools, health care and jobs.


    Education and jobs are a long-term prescription to end poverty. But in the short term, it's hard to go to school on an empty stomach. A job is a ticket out of poverty only if it pays enough to live on. With the federal minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour, one quarter of the working families in America live below the poverty line.


    Taking care of the poor -- helping them buy food and clothing, get to work and pay rent so they aren't homeless -- costs money. Voters equate expensive social programs with higher taxes. The only campaign message that's palatable to the middle class today is: Help the poor help themselves (so they can pay their own way).


    In Santa Clara County, CalWORKs employment counselors are helping the poor help themselves. They're placing welfare clients in jobs that pay an average of $11 an hour. But even that wage isn't enough to support a family in Silicon Valley, and many single parents have to work two jobs.


    Increasingly, unemployed fathers are joining women in the employment office. But recent state budget cuts will make it harder for the county to provide those workers with the support they need to work. The two men who want to lead America for the next four years don't want voters to look at the face of poverty. But the growing divide between rich and poor is going to plague the next president.


     


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October 31, 2004











  • Posted on Sun, Oct. 31, 2004


    A baby step toward Harvard

    By Dave Barry

    So my wife and I went to this meeting at our daughter's preschool. The purpose was to give us helpful information about our kindergarten options.


    Let me just say, as a parent: AIEEEEEEEEEEE.


    Centuries ago, when I was a small hairless preschool child in Armonk, N.Y., kindergarten was simple. When you turned 5, you enrolled in Wampus Elementary and attended Miss Gregory's kindergarten class, where you made hideous refrigerator art from construction paper and paste. There were no other curriculum options, unless you count the option of, when Miss Gregory was not looking, eating the paste.


    I honestly thought it would be pretty much the same thing for our daughter. I mean, we live near an elementary school. It has a kindergarten. I figured Sophie would attend kindergarten there. I was an idiot.


    It turns out that this is not about kindergarten at all. This is about life. And when I say ``life,'' I mean ``Harvard.'' You need to get your child into the right kindergarten program, so that she can get into the right elementary-school program, without which she cannot get into the right middle-school program, without which she can't get into the right high-school program, which means She will not get into Harvard and all because you flushed her life down the toilet by picking the wrong kindergarten, you uncaring parental scum.


    I know what you're thinking: ``That's ridiculous! You can't wait until your child is 5 years old to start thinking about Harvard! You have to start much sooner!''


    This is true. In certain places, by which I mean Manhattan, serious parents start obsessing about Harvard before their child is, technically, born. They spend their evenings shouting the algebraic equations in the general direction of the womb so the child will have an edge during the intensely competitive process of applying for New York City's exclusive private preschools, where tuition can run -- and I am not making this figure up -- well over $15,000 a year. If you're wondering how a preschool can get away with charging that kind of money, the answer is three words: really delicious paste.


    But seriously, the question is: Why are these parents willing to go to such extremes, and spend so much money, to get a child into a certain nursery school? The answer is: They're insane.


    No, that's unfair. They simply want their children to have every possible academic advantage so they can get into Harvard, which admits only extremely high achievers, which a lot of the time means students whose parents have driven themselves insane.


    But it's not their fault! It's Harvard's fault! Harvard could do this nation a great service by changing its admission policies. Imagine if, instead of accepting a typical applicant who is class president and valedictorian and star athlete and active in community affairs, Harvard started selecting applicants based on, say, their ability to burp the theme song from ``Gilligan's Island.'' Wouldn't that cause these Harvard-crazed hyper-parents to allow their kids to just be kids?


    No, it would not. It would create a huge demand for burping tutors. But getting back to our kindergarten meeting: We went in there naively thinking we were going to find out how to enroll our daughter in the local kindergarten. Instead, we spent 90 minutes finding out that we had all these options: Did we want our daughter to be in a magnet program? What kind? Math and science? Performing arts? Or maybe a gifted program? And should it be integrated gifted? Or pullout gifted? Or learning-disabled? Or learning-disabled gifted? And what about private school?


    These options, and many more, were explained to us by two nice, knowledgeable people with long experience in the local schools. They urged us to visit schools and ask many questions before making our decision. They stressed that every child is different, and there is no right answer. I think I speak for every parent in the room when I say that I came out of there truly believing that, whatever choice we made for our daughter, it would somehow be wrong and she would not get into Harvard.


    When we got home, our daughter was wearing her Ariel the Mermaid outfit. She is deeply into being a mermaid. If there were a gifted mermaid magnet kindergarten program, that would be her first choice. And, for that matter, mine. Assuming they have decent paste.






     

     

     

     

October 30, 2004


  • New Florida vote scandal feared







    		By Greg Palast
    Reporting for Newsnight


    A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.


    Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

    It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

    An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

    Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.

    Mass challenges

    They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.

    Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."

    "Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."

    Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal.


    In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.

    The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.

    When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature.

    Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher stated the list was not put together "in order to create" a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.

    Rather, she did acknowledge that the party's poll workers will be instructed to challenge voters, "Where it's stated in the law."

    There was no explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.

    Private detective


    In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.

    The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.

    On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimidate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.

    Greg Palast's film was broadcast by Newsnight on Tuesday, 26 October, 2004.

     


    You can also watch the show from this website, either live or on demand for 24 hours after originally broadcast, by clicking on the latest programme button

     

    Newsnight is broadcast on BBC Two at 2230 BST every weeknight in the UK.



    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm

    Published: 2004/10/26 17:06:30 GMT

    © BBC MMIV

     

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October 29, 2004








  • Posted on Fri, Oct. 29, 2004















    Parents use test scores to pick out new houses


    SCHOOL INDEX DRIVING COSTS, REALTORS AND EDUCATORS SAY

    By Dana Hull

    Mercury News


    When Aparna Seethepalli and Sarvesh Jagannivas jumped into the housing market, they met their real estate agent armed with spreadsheets, charts, and one number: 920.


    With two young children, the couple only wanted to buy in one of Silicon Valley's best school districts. So they insisted on seeing houses near schools with scores of 920 or above on the state's Academic Performance Index.


    The latest API scores, released Thursday, rank California public schools based on how well students score on standardized tests.


    Parents, teachers and superintendents always pay close attention to the scores. But the scores are also driving real estate prices for prospective home buyers and sellers, real estate agents and educators say, because they make it possible to compare schools to others within the same school district.


    From Fremont to Almaden Valley to Palo Alto, ``score shopping'' is more important to some than commute times, lot size or granite counter tops.


    Critics argue that API only proves how well students take tests, while real learning is influenced by creative teaching, innovative music or arts programs, and classroom culture. High API scores are overwhelmingly associated with socioeconomic status and the education levels of parents, so some educators grumble that API stands for ``Affluent Parent Index.'' Schools with low scores tend to have high concentrations of students living in poverty or learning English for the first time.


    Sarvesh Jagannivas, a marketing director at San Jose's Agile Software, knows that API doesn't tell a school's whole story. But when he and his wife began their house hunt last spring, he crunched API data with gusto.


    He talked to friends and colleagues about schools and scores and pored over Web sites such as www.great schools.net. He carefully plotted charts and graphs, paying close attention to schools that made gains on API over time and those that showed volatility.


    ``It became for us literally a number for the school and the community,'' said Jagannivas, who attended private schools in his native India but wants a public school experience for his children. ``If a school had 850 and they inched upward in a consistent fashion, I knew something good was happening in the school.''


    His intense preparation made his wife chuckle.


    ``My husband is an analytical MBA type of guy -- everything has to be graphed and charted out,'' she said. ``Education is very important to us, and API scores were the best measure for us to say `This is a good school.' ''


    Their Realtor, Malka Nagel, has seen this kind of research before.


    ``One client came in with a map of various cities and stickers everywhere,'' said Nagel. ``It was color coded for Most Acceptable, Acceptable, and Least Acceptable schools.''


    One Cupertino real estate agent plans to include API scores in an upcoming mailer. Another found clients a townhouse they loved -- great neighborhood, right price -- but they declined to make an offer because the assigned school had an API of 818, and they wanted 850 or above. The state says that all schools should strive for a score of at least 800.


    ``Realtors ask questions about API that are as technical as any questions I get from local superintendents,'' said Jack O'Connell, a former teacher and the state superintendent of public instruction.


    The Fremont Union High School District has five high schools -- Cupertino, Fremont, Homestead, Lynbrook and Monta Vista -- that are among the best in the state.


    But within the district, slight variations in API scores greatly affect real estate prices. Homes within the boundaries of high-scoring Monta Vista and Lynbrook command higher prices than equivalent houses in the Homestead or Cupertino attendance areas, which in turn are higher then Fremont. One agent said that a house that would sell for $780,000 in the Cupertino high school attendance area probably would fetch $1 million in Monta Vista.


    ``It becomes a situation where the good schools get sought after, and that drives up appreciation,'' said Steve Elich, a Coldwell Banker agent in Cupertino. ``As the prices go up the people who can afford them tend to be higher educated, so the schools get even better. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.''


    Shelby Spain, Fremont Union's assessment director, warns that API, while important, is not the only measure parents should look at.


    ``We need to get the message across that API is not the most important factor,'' said Spain. ``You need to look at the courses that are offered and the culture of the school.''


    One of Elich's clients, David McDonnell, is currently renting in San Francisco with his wife and two children. McDonnell commutes to Redwood Shores in Redwood City for work, and they want to buy in the Cherry Chase neighborhood of Sunnyvale. Elich taught them the ins and outs of API, and 850 is the number they have in mind.


    ``We look at the home as the largest investment we'll ever make,'' said McDonnell, who is already thinking about preschool for his 20-month-old son and 5-week-old daughter. ``I see good schools as an insurance policy against a crash in the market. Even in down markets, if the real estate flatlines, you'll be able to get a good return on your investment.''


    Seethepalli and Jagannivas got lucky. They could afford to buy a house in Saratoga's ``golden triangle,'' the area that feeds Saratoga High School. In April, they closed on a house with a beautifully landscaped front yard, three bedrooms, and a plum tree.


    It cost more than $1 million, but they feel it is worth it. Their 6-year-old daughter, Ankitha, is in the first grade at Argonaut Elementary, which has an API score of 949 (a slight drop from last year's score of 952).


    ``We are quite happy with the school,'' said Jagannivas, who likes the emphasis on math and science, the level of parental involvement, and the fact that it feeds Redwood Middle School and Saratoga High School. ``So far my hypothesis has come true.''


     


     


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    Posted on Fri, Oct. 29, 2004



    P.A. parcel tax supporters worry they may fall short

    By Nicole C. Wong
    Mercury News

    Palo Alto Unified's parcel tax supporters are fretting that a school funding ballot measure may fail here for the first time in 27 years.


    It's an almost unthinkable outcome in this scholarly town, where the lure of Stanford University and the lore of top-performing public schools have helped sanctify all things educational. Even though less than 30 percent of Palo Alto households have school-age children, more than 75 percent of voters approved the school district's last two tax increases.


    The two-thirds voter approval needed to pass special property taxes has been a hurdle too high for many school districts up and down the state. Palo Alto had no problem persuading voters to pass a $143 million school renovation bond in 1995 and its $27.5 million parcel tax in 2001. Those successes, however, may hinder Measure I, this year's pitch for an additional $72.9 million over eight years, said both supporters and opponents.


    ``We're nervous and will be right up until we see the results,'' said Don Way, co-chair of the Yes on I campaign. ``We're aware that we were out in the community for a bond about 10 years ago and a little less than four years ago for the first parcel tax. And here we are again.''


    Add in the sluggish local economy, and you have a contest that is going to be a lot closer than before, predicted Way, who served as school board president when the bond passed and as campaign co-chair of the previous parcel tax.


    Measure I proposes to extend the current five-year parcel tax, which expires in 2006, until 2013. It also would increase the annual fee from $293 to $521 per parcel. The $9.8 million raised annually would restore some of the $6.5 million in budget cuts over the past two years, offset future budget cuts, maintain small class sizes and pay salaries high enough to attract top teachers. Senior citizens could apply for an exemption.


    Last loss: 1977


    The last time Palo Altans voted down a special school tax was 1977. The district had proposed a ballot measure amounting to an average tax increase of 5 percent for three years. While voters supported that idea when it surfaced at an election two years earlier, they rejected its extension.


    Today, some Palo Alto Unified parents have grown so weary of the repeated requests for more donations and taxes that even though they supported the initial parcel tax, they are now saying ``no'' to its renewal. Staunch supporters are startled at this sign that one of the state's most coveted school districts is losing some ground with its core constituency.


    Steve Mullen is a rare breed, both vocal and visible about his opposition. The father of a Palo Alto High School sophomore and senior has walked through his neighborhood distributing fliers and discussing why he's not voting for Measure I, even though he backed the current parcel tax.


    His family is facing an 8 percent pay cut this year, the accountant said. But the bigger issue is he's not convinced the district needs this much more money to provide a quality education.


    Andy Shaw also doesn't understand why the district wants to raise the parcel tax more than 75 percent. But he's still going to vote for the measure, even though it will boost his first property tax bill. The Shaws moved out of an apartment and into their first home this week.


    ``It's a lot of money, but I guess it's the least I can do since other people are going to be paying for my kids to go to school,'' said Shaw, who has a child in third grade and another one who's not yet old enough for school.


    Finding favor


    To pass, the tax increase, which will cost a homeowner $3,875 over eight years, must find favor with voters who don't have school-age children.


    Irena Smith, a mother who is all for the parcel tax, visited 12 senior citizens in her neighborhood to hear how they planned to vote and was a bit disheartened with the half-and-half results. Smith says it would be sad if class sizes ballooned beyond 20 students by the time her 4-year-old enters kindergarten. Already, kindergartners are getting less individual attention because their classroom aides' hours have been cut.


    ``The integrity of the schools already has been dismantled,'' Smith said, ``bit by bit.''


     


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  • EDITORIAL

    Kerry for President
    Far from perfect, he still offers a better choice

        There was a time when President Bush could be forgiven. On the face of things, he wanted to do something good for this country, preaching in the 2000 campaign the virtues of modesty in world affairs and compassionate conservatism at home. He wanted to let people save more of their money and not let the government waste it, as it so often does. Even in his science policy, his decision on restricting stem cell research seemed the product of moral introspection, even if it was politically calculated and flawed. And when he stood atop Ground Zero and later before Congress, his anger at the terrorists and forces of this world that would allow an atrocity like Sept. 11, 2001, was evident. A world unknown had been thrust upon his administration, and mistakes were certain to be made.

        Bush has made the war on terrorism the centerpiece of his campaign, but he has failed to make terrorism his first priority. Shortly after Sept. 11, Bush stopped focusing on the real enemy — al Qaida — and fixated on Saddam Hussein. The administration is right to say the world was divided about Saddam's ability to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction. Sen. John Kerry believed Saddam was capable. But in the aftermath of the war, Bush refuses to acknowledge that his administration made strategic mistakes. The costs of this inflexibility are remote to most Princetonians, but Iraqi civilians and American soldiers — many of them our age — are dying every day because of it.

        The yardstick we must measure the president by in this election year is not, at the very least, the quantity of his errors. It is the Iraq example, however, which shows why the president ought not to be forgiven, and what sets Kerry above Bush. The president is either unable or opposed to conceding error, changing his mind in public or speaking beyond prepared words. The yardstick we must measure the president by in a world with so many unknowns is an ability to adapt to changing circumstances, new truths — discussed as transparently as possible so to be informed by as many people as possible. In this regard Bush has failed plainly. His refusal to change failed policies has left America worse off, more vulnerable. The time for forgiveness has lapsed; the time for change is here.

        Kerry is far from perfect, but the time has come for a man who seems willing to retrace history and adapt — a man as least as flexible and open minded as Bush seemed four years ago. A Kerry presidency could restore the transparency and openness — in thinking, discussion, communication and accountability — necessary to ensure that all options are scrutinized before executive decisions are made, and that mistakes are dealt with openly.

        Imagining the value of a fresh president open to fresh ideas only rekindles Bush's own failings. In 2003, Bush announced a new multi-billion dollar plan to aid Africa's HIV/AIDS-ravaged population. But now we have changed our foreign aid policies to deny birth control capabilities to these countries. In his 2000 campaign, Bush promised tax cuts, an enviable goal in enviable economic times. But his economic policy has put the welfare of the richest Americans before that of most Americans. It has made us a less just and equal society, even as we preach justice to the world. In the face of rising costs of the war in Iraq, some Americans save hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes as our troops go without basic equipment. Bush refuses to reconsider the virtue of the tax cuts, an inflexibility we have seen throughout the executive branch. In indefinite detentions and some anti-terror policies, the president undermines some of the basic civil liberties that distinguish our country from the ones we criticize.

        Kerry has not presented a compelling vision for the country. Bush has had four years to implement his vision for America, and that vision has resulted in a country divided and fearful. If Kerry flip-flopping means reevaluating the past four years of decisions, he offers a stark contrast to the president and a far more attractive choice.

    Editorials reflect the majority opinion of The Daily Princetonian's student editorial board and not the opinions of either Princeton University or The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc.

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    October 30, 2004

    Post-Election Sticker Shock







    It's not too soon to talk about the problems the winner of Tuesday's election will face. One of the biggest is the hemorrhaging cost of the war in Iraq.


    The Bush administration, which got an early $25 billion down payment for the new fiscal year with the certainty of asking for more, has left the 2005 war budget's bottom line conveniently blank until after the voters have spoken. But the estimates already circulating say that the president will have to ask for as much as $70 billion more and that the next Congress will have to approve the request in February if the military burdens of Iraq, and to a smaller extent Afghanistan, are to be faced realistically.


    If a one-year price tag of $95 billion materializes from the Pentagon budget estimates that are now being prepared, it will drive the war costs to $225 billion and counting since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Capitol Hill lawmakers, already locked into a decade of deficit spending, are in denial about the skyrocketing costs. Republicans eagerly pointed out this week that the final numbers were not yet in.


    That's true, but there is little doubt about the general size of the next budget request. Whatever the final number is, it will reflect the hard fact that Iraq is draining far more in blood and treasure than was ever anticipated before the administration's dream of a tidy war turned to ashes. The White House confidently estimated last February that the war's annual cost was unlikely to exceed $50 billion. But that estimate was based on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's odd notion that the United States could conquer, hold and rebuild Iraq with just a few divisions - and Mr. Rumsfeld believed that most of them would have been home by now. The White House also failed to account for the possibility that the Iraqis might resist the occupation, much less for the fierce insurgency that took hold.


    Costs rose as the Pentagon was forced to maintain tens of thousands more troops in Iraq than it had planned, straining the Army to the point where some 90 percent of its men at arms are either in Iraq, headed to Iraq or rotating out of Iraq for much-needed rest. Now there are demands for even more soldiers to try to secure enough of Iraq to attempt face-saving elections in January. The Pentagon, scrambling to cover costs, can no longer defer maintenance and other vital needs, but its ability to repair and service battlefield equipment is stretched to the limit. The generals have had to shoot down as unrealistic the election-timed leaks from the administration about grand plans to shorten soldiers' 12-month tours.


    Both John Kerry and President Bush have vowed to stay in Iraq until it is stabilized. If so, they'll have to come to grips with a staggering bill.




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  • October 29, 2004

    Economy Grew at Slower-Than-Expected 3.7% in 3rd Quarter


    By REUTERS





    Filed at 9:28 a.m. ET


    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy expanded at a 3.7 percent annual rate in the third quarter, below expectations but still bolstered by healthy consumer spending that was accompanied by the lowest inflation in decades, the Commerce Department said on Friday.


    Though the third-quarter expansion in gross domestic product -- the measure of total output within the nation's borders -- came in below Wall Street economists' forecasts for a 4.2 percent pace of growth, it still was up from 3.3 percent in the second quarter.


    It was one of the final pieces of economic data before Tuesday's U.S. presidential election in which the economy's condition has been a focal point, and indicated generally that a solid expansion remains in place.


    ``I think it shows, as the Fed (Federal Reserve) indicated, that the economy regained some traction in the third quarter, but the growth is not robust,'' economist Gary Thayer of A.G. Edwards and Sons Inc. in St. Louis said. ``I think it means the Fed can take its time raising rates.''


    Central bank policymakers meet on Nov. 10 to consider interest-rate strategy and are widely expected to nudge rates up another quarter percentage point -- a fourth such move this year -- but likely to keep rates steady at their final meeting of the year in December.


    Some analysts noted that America's swelling trade deficit seemed to be putting a damper on the rate of expansion but not putting a lid on it entirely.


    ``It's a pretty good growth rate, but it may not be enough to create jobs,'' said economist Robert Brusca of Fact and Opinion Economics in New York.


    The dollar's value weakened against other major currencies after the GDP report was published. Bond prices weakened initially but later regained some of the losses, apparently heartened by the indications of very low inflation that is helpful for bond investors because it means price rises are not as likely to sap yields.


    Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of economic activity, increased at the fastest rate in a year while a price gauge that is favored by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - the index of personal consumption expenditures minus food and energy - barely increased at a 0.7 percent rate.


    That was the smallest gain in this price measure in nearly 42 years, since a 0.5 percent rise in the fourth quarter of 1962, department officials said.


    The department said that consumer spending increased at a solid 4.6 percent annual rate in the third quarter, well ahead of the 1.6 percent rate posted in the second quarter. Businesses also kept investing strongly, with so-called nonresidential spending growing at an 11.7 percent rate after a 12.5 percent pace of growth during the second quarter.


    The snapshot of ongoing expansion presented by the GDP figures, backed by brisk consumer and business spending, likely will be seized upon by the Bush administration as evidence that its policies were producing solid growth.


    Democratic contender Sen. John Kerry has criticized lagging job creation and record budget deficits since President Bush took office in January 2001.


    There was some falloff in inventory-building during the third quarter, which subtracts from growth. Businesses built up their stocks of unsold goods at a $48.1-billion annual rate after adding to them at a $61.1-billion rate in the second quarter, possibly a reflection of accelerated spending by consumers that was especially evident for costly durable goods like new cars.


     


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